[Educationforall] spam con huevos labor news, views and concerns, 2.17.12-I

Sat Feb 18 04:30:31 UTC 2012

Robert Scheer on Apple's Chinese Labor Controversy "Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us"  Jim Lair Beard on Workers and the Wealthy "Waiting on the Wealth Hoarders"  William Pfaff on Protests in Greece "Greek Unrest the Result of Suppressed Democracy"  How the 1% Destroys Jobs and the Real Heroes are Everyday People  Occupy Wall Street Calls for May Day General Strike  Daily Show Takes on Right-Wing Insanity on Women in Combat: Should Women Expect to Be "Paid Slightly Less, Raped Slightly More?"  Labor Seminar to Cuba April 21 to May 5, 2012‏Forum on ALBA: in Chicago- March 22-23, 2012‏ Congress Acts to Extend Aid to Jobless and Payroll Tax Cut   Occupy Joins the Fight Against Private Prisons  @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Robert Scheer on Apple's Chinese Labor Controversy
"Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us" -- It seems China’s labor practices are now to be admired rather than scorned, lest the American economy decline further in the new world order. 

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Jim Lair Beard on Workers and the Wealthy
"Waiting on the Wealth Hoarders" -- You are not a patriot if you prize profits over people. You are a hoarder of wealth. 
>> SPECIAL REPORTS:
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William Pfaff on Protests in Greece
"Greek Unrest the Result of Suppressed Democracy" -- Denied a referendum on crippling austerity measures, Greeks demonstrated Sunday night that if they couldn’t express their opinions one way, then they would do it in another. 

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-How the 1% Destroys Jobs and the Real Heroes are Everyday PeopleMitt Romney & Co. want us to think that making the rich richer will create jobs. That's not true. And it's not the American way. READ MOREBy Lynn Parramore / AlterNet
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Occupy Wall Street Calls for May Day General StrikeBy Nathan Schneider | Waging Nonviolence

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Daily Show Takes on Right-Wing Insanity on Women in Combat: Should Women Expect to Be "Paid Slightly Less, Raped Slightly More?"By Sarah Seltzer | AlterNet

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US/Cuba Labor Exchange Seminar to Cuba April 21 to May 5,2012 Two Weeks 21th anniversary of the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange.US/Cuba Labor Exchange  P.O. Box 39188 Redford, MI 48239 Phone/Fax: (313) 675 4026 E-mail: laborexchange at aol.comhttp://laborexchange.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html Join the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange to participate in the Cuban Labor Seminar to Cuba Saturday April 21to Saturday May 5, 2012 (one week $1,250) Two week of Cuba Labor Seminar-On Cuban education Uniting America's Working Class and Increasing its InfluencePromote people to people contact73 Anniversary of the CTC Central Workers of Cuba53 Anniversary of the Cuban RevolutionThis delegation will be in Havana, Cuba from Saturday April 23 to Thursday May 5, 2011 Our hosts will be the CTC Confederation of Cuban Workers. We will visit hospitals, schools, and worker centers and participate at the May day celebrationThe price of the trip will include: round trip airfare (from Cancun, Mexico to Havana, Cuba to Cancun, Mexico) hotel (double occupancy), 2 meals per day (breakfast and dinner), internal transportation to and from the program, translation, visas and the program.* The price of $1,650 for two weeks. is good until the end of March, The price may increase for any application made after that date.  A group of trade unionists and workers are exercising their constitutional right to travel to Cuba, to gather educational information and to have an exchange of ideas with other workers of the world. These rights are guaranteed by the US Constitution and by the International Human Rights declaration of the United Nations."...one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." Rev. Martin Luther King Jr."Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental. The freedom to learn. Has been bought by bitter sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn." - W.E.B. DuBois, "The Freedom to Learn." (1949)All questions MUST be completed. PLEASE PRINT neatly and/or type. The original application must be submitted, with a copy of your passport attached and $300 deposit made payable to the Labor Exchange. All information will be kept confidential Legal Name (as it appears on the passport):_____________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________________________ City_______________________________ State ______________________ Zip ?Code___________ Phone/Fax _____________________________e-mail: ____________________________________ Union/Organization__________________________________________________________ How/from whom did you learn about the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange ___________________________ Passport#_________________________________ Expiration Date_________________ Date of birth__________________________ Place of birth __________________ _______________ Please mail your application ?to: US/Cuba Labor ?Exchange P.O. Box 39188 Redford, MI 48239 Phone/Fax:(313)675 4026 mailto:laborexchange at aol.com All of the work we do is volunteer run, consider making a donation to support us. 
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The U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange conferences in Tijuana, Mexico focus on theses themes specifically related to workers. Please welcome Cuban Ambassador Bolanos at this excellent and informative forum!  For more information on the Tijuana Conferences, bookmark: laborexchange.blogspot.comForum on ALBA: 
Latin America and the Continental Integration of the PeoplesThe achievements of ALBA-TCP (alba-tcp.org) and the integration of the continental social movements
 Thursday, March 22 and Friday, March 23
5:00-8:00pm DePaul University
Schmitt Academic Center (SAC) Room 154 
2320 N. Kenmore, Chicago

Thursday, March 22:  
Conference on the Social Movements of the ALBA-TCP NationsLuther Castillo,  Spokesperson for the Honduran People’s Front forNational Resistance;  co-coordinator of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine's international team of physicians working in Haiti after the earthquakeRummie Quintero, LGBT activist, VenezuelaJosé Aguilar, Free Software Movement, VenezuelaAmenothep Zambrano, Executive Secretary of ALBA-TCPJose Pertierra, represents Venezuelan government in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles
Friday, March 23: 
Conference with Diplomats of the ALBA-TCP NationsFrancisco Campbell Hooker, Nicaragua Ambassador in WashingtonJorge Bolaños Suárez, Chief of the Cuban Interests Section in WashingtonAngelo Rivero, Presiding Officer of the Embassy of Venezuela in WashingtonFreddy Bersatti Tudela, Presiding Officer of the Embassy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in Washington Amenothep Zambrano, Executive Secretary of ALBA-TCP  Organized by: DePaul University, General Consulate of Venezuela in Chicago,Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5,  La Voz de los de Abajo.             For more information:  Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza <ven.chicago at gmail.com>; Stan Smith, uscubachi at yahoo.com, 773-376-7521    What is ALBA?    The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Trade Treaty of the People (ALBA-TCP) presently consists of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominica, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Nicaragua.   “ALBA’s fight is for a second true independence for Latin America and Caribbean; to free ourselves from poverty and illiteracy and achieve development for our people,” explains Amenothep Zambrano,  Executive Secretary of ALBA.   ALBA is a trade agreement that mutually benefits all parties based on the strengths and weaknesses of each of the members. It builds Latin American unity and solidarity through mutual economic development, fair trade, joint development projects and South-South coordination. This is a radical break neo-colonial history based upon imperial exploitation, the fiction of a free market, and domination by the United States. Why was ALBA created?    ALBA was created as a direct response to the attempt by the United States to impose the Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty on the entire region of Latin America and the Caribbean. Implementation of the FTAA would have imposed intensified neo-liberal economic policies, increasing crushing levels of poverty, unemployment and foreign-imposed debt.     Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro formally created ALBA on Dec. 14, 2004, at the celebration of the 180th anniversary of the  victory of Ayacucho, the day Simón Bolívar’s army won independence from SpainThe need for alliances such as ALBA is demonstrated by the more than 50-year-long war waged by the United States against Cuba, the 2002 failed U.S.-coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the 2009 U.S. coup against the democratically-elected pro-ALBA president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, the 7  new U.S. military bases in Colombia, and the failed U.S. coups in Bolivia and Ecuador.ALBA countries have recently condemned foreign intervention in Libya and Syria, and have recently strengthened their ties with Iran. What Has ALBA Accomplished?     ALBA initiatives include: the ALBA Bank, funding the different development projects in their countries, working towards independence from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other exploiting global institutions; the creation of 12 public companies to strengthen national economies in agriculture, infrastructure, telecommunications, industrial supplies and cement production; PetroCaribe, which greatly increases access to energy resources; and a diverse array of health and education programs.    ALBA’s social achievements include the elimination of poverty for 11 million people in only five years, through free universal education, food programs, and health programs. Unemployment has dropped to 8.7%, lower than in the U.S. Literacy rates have risen from 84% to 96%; now Bolivia and Nicaragua join Cuba and Venezuela in being free of illiteracy. Infant mortality rates have been reduced by 32%; life expectancy increased to 73 years. 1,899.808 people have had their vision restored or improved  through Mision Milagro.  2,294,666 handicapped persons have received health care service for their problems. Hundreds of their countries students are enrolled in ALBA’s Latin American School of Medicine to develop still more critically-needed medical workers.    The leading official of the Venezuela Embassy recently noted that U.S. media routinely demonizes ALBA and its programs as threats to its own system. He disputed that, saying that ALBA and its programs are “not threats but opportunities taken by Latin American and Caribbean countries to develop their own people with their own resources….We have changed and we aren’t going back. If U.S. representatives understand this, we will be able to go forward, if not, we will defend what we have created!”
---------------------------------------------------------------------Participate in a: V Union Meeting " Nuestra America" at Mexico city, Mexico- May 19 to May 27,  2012.
US/Cuba Labor Exchange 

P.O. Box 39188 Redford, MI 48239 Phone/Fax: (313) 254 523 9074  E-mail:  laborexchange @ aol.com 

Join the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange to participate in a: V Union Meeting " Nuestra America" at Mexico City - Uniting America’s Working Class and Increasing its Influence
Raising the level of struggle and Unity of the Worker Movements 

A  Labor delegation to Mexico City, from Saturday May 19 to Sunday May 27, 2012 
Labor Seminar-United for a New America, We will participate in V Union Meeting " Nuestra America" The price of the trip will include: round trip International airfare  (Los Angeles, California to Mexico City), hotel (double occupancy), breakfast, Dinner, internal transportation to and from the program, translation, and the program.* The price of $1,350 is good until  the end of March, The price may  increase for any application made after that date. 

A group of trade unionists and workers are exercising their constitutional right to travel to Mexico, to gather educational information and to have an exchange of ideas with other workers of the world. These rights are guaranteed by the US Constitution and by the International Human Rights declaration of the United Nations.

All questions MUST be completed. PLEASE PRINT neatly and/or type. 
The  original application must be submitted, with a copy of your passport attached  and $300 USDollars
deposit made payable to the Labor Exchange. All information  will be kept confidential 

Legal Name (as it appears on passport):_____________________________________________ 
Address:__________________________________________________________________________ 
City_______________________________ State ______________________ Zip  Code___________ 
Phone/Fax _____________________________e-mail:  ____________________________________ 
Union/Organization__________________________________________________________________ 
How/from whom did you learn about the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange ___________________________ 

Passport#_________________________________  Expiration Date_________________ 
Date of  birth__________________________ Place of birth __________________ _______________ 

Please mail your application  to: 
US/Cuba Labor  Exchange 
P.O. Box  39188 
Redford, MI  48239 
Phone/Fax:254 5239074mailto:laborexchange @ aol.com 
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1)	Locked-Out Workers to Embark on Journey for Justice
2)	Judicial Developments in Lockout Rights

1) Locked-Out Workers to Embark on Journey for Justice

Posted By admin On February 9, 2012 

http://blog.aflcio.org/2012/02/09/locked-out-workers-to-embark-on-journey-for-justice/#more-69201

Amy Masciola, a union campaign consultant, sends us
this.

More than six months ago, American Crystal Sugar Co.
locked out more than 1,300 sugar beet workers in the
Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota. Two
months ago, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. locked out more
than 1,000 workers in Findlay, Ohio. Last week,
Caterpillar announced it would shut down a plant in
Ontario, just over one month after locking out 500
workers. Rio Tinto Alcan locked out 750 workers in
Quebec Jan. 1. HealthBridge locked out 800 nursing home
workers in Connecticut in December. As Laura Clawson at
the Daily Kos [1] notes, "For evidence of a war on
workers, look no further than the rise of the lockout."

Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times wrote [2]
recently that the number of strikes has dropped
precipitously in the past two decades, while lockouts
now "represent a record percentage of the nation's work
stoppages." Greenhouse quotes professor Gary Chaison of
Clark University, who says:

This is a sign of increased employer militancy.
Lockouts were once so rare they were almost unheard of.
Now, not only are employers increasingly on the
offensive and trying to call the shots in bargaining,
but they're backing that up with action--in the form of
lockouts.

Unions and our allies are fighting back against this
war on workers. Beginning Feb. 22, locked-out workers
from American Crystal Sugar Co. and Cooper Tire &
Rubber Co. will start a 1,000-mile journey across
America's heartland. They will visit six states in six
days, taking part in rallies, fundraisers and other
actions with local union members and allies. Locked-out
workers will take their message to supporters--and call
out the perpetrators of the war on workers.

From Fargo to Findlay: A Journey for Justice is a joint
project of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers
and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and the United Steelworkers
(USW).

The Journey will begin with a rally in Fargo, N.D., and
will make stops in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and
Indiana, before concluding in Findlay, Ohio. For
workers making the Journey, the message is simple: They
want to keep their union, and they want to go back to
work.

As Paul Woinarowicz, a BCTGM member who has worked for
Crystal Sugar for 34 years, told Greenhouse, the
lockout was:

just another way of trying to break the union....It was
just like a knife stuck in your heart.

The following is a section from a longer piece by Ellen Dannin

FROM DICTATOR GAME TO ULTIMATUM GAME... AND BACK AGAIN:
THE JUDICIAL IMPASSE AMENDMENTS

Ellen Dannin

http://www.law.upenn.edu/search/search.aspx?q=ellen+dannin

C. Judicial Developments in Lockout Rights

An employer's right to lock out is an economic weapon
that, in many ways, seems to be equivalent to the
employee's right to strike. Both exert economic
pressure to force a bargaining partner to agree to an
offer. Unlike strikes, however, lockouts exist in a
difficult tension with the prohibitions of S 8(a)(1)
and (3). A lockout literally punishes employees for
engaging in rights protected by S 7 and for the union
activity of collective bargaining. Lockouts now tend to
last for years. 5' Because the employer controls the
start and the end of the lockout, a lockout is close to
a discharge if long-term. In contrast, striking to
exert economic pressure does not violate the law, so
employees have a legal right to choose whether and when
to strike or to end a strike and return to their jobs
(assuming they have not been permanently replaced).52
No statute protects an employer's right to lock out
employees.

Taken further, an employer that locks out its employees
for years because they refuse to agree to the
employer's proposal and then hires new employees to do
their work has effectively fired them. Firing employees
for refusing to agree to an employer's offer should
lead to a finding that the employer violated S 8(a)(3)
for discharging workers for their union activities; S
8(a)(1) for interfering with, restraining and coercing
workers for engaging in concerted activities to provide
mutual support to one another with regard to their
wages, hours and other terms and conditions of
employment; and S 8(a)(5) for bargaining in bad faith
by using a technique that violated workers' legal
rights.53

In the early days of the NLRA, the courts recognized
-that lockouts are not equivalent to strikes and could
easily violate the purpose of the law. If a lockout has
the potential to infringe on NLRA rights, the ability
to replace locked out workers certainly does. In its
most destructive form, an employer could lock out
workers and replace them, but never end the lockout.
The resulting discharge for union and concerted
activities also could allow an employer to destroy the
union's power to represent the workers. In the past,
the courts were thus careful to severely circumscribe
the right to lock out. More recently, however, courts
have dramatically expanded the employer's right to lock
out. Courts have moved away from permitting employers
to lock out only defensively, that is, to lock out only
to protect a multi-employer bargaining group from being
whipsawed when a union strikes only one employer in the
group or to preempt a union's ability to choose a time
to strike that would most injure the employer.5 4 In
1965, employers were allowed to lock out offensively as
well, that is, to place economic pressure on a union to
agree to an employer's offer.55

A parallel course of judicial decisions has removed
restrictions that once prevented employers from hiring
replacement workers during a lockout. Before 1986,
employers were allowed to use only temporary
replacements and then only in defensive lockouts. In
1986, the Reagan NLRB decided that employers could use
temporary replacements during offensive lockouts as
well.56

The most dramatic judicial rewriting of the NLRA and
legalizing of what is in essence a violation of S
8(a)(3) came in the D.C. Circuit's 1997 decision in
InternationalPaperv. NLRB.57 The court allowed the
employer to permanently displace 51 the workers it had
locked out. 9 In International Paper,6* the parties
began bargaining for a successor contract in early
January 1987. On February 20, the employer presented
its "best and final" offer and said it would lock out
the employees if the union did not accept it. On March
7, after the offer was rejected, International Paper
(IP) unilaterally implemented its proposal and then
hired temporary replacements through BE&K. 6 On March
21, it locked out its Mobile, Alabama employees, to
prevent what it said would be whipsawing.62

During the lockout, IP gave the union a proposal
stating that IP could, "'at its option, contract out
any or all mill maintenance work on a temporary or
permanent basis."'63 The unions insisted they were
willing to bargain about the subcontracting proposal.
To have done otherwise would have put them at impasse
and given the employer the ability to implement its
final offer, but there was no doubt that the union was
strongly opposed. One representative said, "'[D]o you
think that we are going to give up 280 jobs? We want to
stay alive. You're going to get us killed.' '64 On
August 11, IP declared an impasse and implemented a
permanent subcontract of the maintenance work, thus, as
the court of appeals put it, "fulfilling its bargaining
obligations on the issue., 65

The court reached this conclusion because it looked
only at each discrete action by IP, deracinated from
its legal context, and concluded that, since each step
was sanctioned by law, so too must be the whole act.
Thus, past judicial decisions said employers have the
right to lock out employees, so the lockout was
legal.66 IP was also permitted to hire temporary
replacements to fill the locked out workers' jobs. IP
had the right to propose that it have the right to
subcontract this bargaining unit work permanently and
solely at its discretion. The union could have acceded
to the employer's demand, but had it done so it would
have committed institutional suicide. The employer must
have known that the union could never agree to this
term and that therefore the parties would certainly and
quickly reach an impasse. When the union refused to
agree, IP declared that the parties were at impasse
and, as it had the legal right to do, implemented the
subcontracting proposal and then subcontracted the
work, permanently as far as the union knew. With that
act, the employer de facto discharged the unit
employees, destroyed the bargaining unit, and ended the
union's status as the unit's representative.

Had the court looked at all these acts in the
aggregate, it would have seen that what IP had done was
discharge employees solely for not agreeing to the
employer's offer, an act that violates S 8(a)(3) and
(5). Even had the court failed to consider the express
language of the NLRA, it might have asked how
permitting an employer to pursue this course of action
furthers the Act's goals of promoting equality of
bargaining power and collective bargaining.

Indeed, had the court thought about the parties'
actions and their meanings, it would have seen that IP
was in no danger of a strike. The union had said it
would not strike despite the parties' failure to reach
an agreement. A thoughtful court ought to have found
this curious and, had it considered the matter, would
have understood that the union could not strike because
it was afraid IP would permanently replace the
strikers. The court would have also seen that the union
faced an employer to which the law had given the power
to dictate an offer that the union had no power to
reject and to use the most extreme measures to enforce
that power. The statute said that the dictator game had
ended in 1935. The courts say otherwise.68

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.
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Congress Acts to Extend Aid to Jobless and Payroll Tax CutJohn H. Cushman Jr. and Robert Pear, The New York Times News Service: "With members of both parties expressing distaste at some of the particulars, Congress on Friday voted to extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits and sent the legislation to President Obama, ending a contentious political and policy fight." Read the Article 

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Occupy Joins the Fight Against Private PrisonsRania Khalek, Truthout: "The National Prison Divestment Campaign was organized less than a year ago by Enlace, a coalition of US and Mexican low-wage worker centers and unions, to pressure corporations to divest from private prisons, whose chief investors include some of country's largest financial institutions such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, both of which have provoked the ire of the Occupy movement for their role in tanking the economy, among other things." Read the Article 

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